Saturday, July 28, 2012

Concept of Health, Population and Environment Education

Concept of Health,Population and Environment Education


'Health' refers to the state of well-being of a person,which enables the person to lead an enjoyable and productive life in the community.Population means the individuals of the community who possess the quality of health in different degree and different manners. "Environment" indicates the conditions or objects by which  the population is surrounded.Thus,health,population and envirionment are three dimensions of life,which cannot be separated. They are interelated and dependent on each other as shown in the figure below. So focus should be given to establish a balance among these three inseparrable entities.The more the co-ordination and balance the earth's life is also expected to be long.If the environment  is exploited and misused it will be reflected on the health of the people. For instance, floods and landslides are the results of deforestation and these destroy billions worth of properties and human lives all over the world. Furthermore, environmental pollution is primarily  responsible for the ill health of human population.Thus  Health,Population and Environment  education should be given to individuals of all age groups through formal and non-formal approaches. This education should be a continuous lifelong process,and this type of thinking is true identification with subject at hand and motivating in terms of self-growth,self-promotion  and self-improvement. Therefore,health education is a process of:-
- Identification of individual and groups,health needs to develop necessary knowledge,skills and practices to match them.
- Health education is a continuous process,which motivates and helps people to adopt and maintains sound health practices and life styles.
- Health education is a positive approach towards better health and it should be based on the need interest of the individual and community.
 Introduction two Population Education
What is Population?
    In general,the word human population refers to a group of people living in a specific time period. Thus, to be a population of a certain community, a person's physical presence is mandatory for a given specific time period.

What is Population Education?
              Population education is education for population awareness. It is a process, which enables students to understand their own population situation,factors that affect population,population problems and issues. It also motivates to develop positive attitudes and necessary competencies and behaviour to address these problems to attain quality life. Furthermore,it is also concerned with the consquences of rapid population growth,size and situation of population in the family,community,nation and the world. Through population edcation,students will be able to understand the goal of population edcation is to promote the quality of life and to make students take worthwhile decisions on population related problems and issues.

Introduction to Environment Education
 What is Environment?
      Etymologically, the term 'environment' means the conditions or objects by which one is surrounded. The surrounding objects are both living and non-living. Furthermore, in its modern concept the environment includes not only the physical aspects, such as water, air and soil but also the social and economic conditions under which we live. There is an inter-relationship and inter-action among these living and non-living objects, and the aggregate of which forms its environment. Environment denotes the sum total of physical and biological factors that directly influence  the survival, growth, development and reproduction of organisms. There are two distinct types of evironment: natural and man-made. Although, both of them have their own distinct elements or components,they are inter-related  and inter-dependent on each other and constitute a complex whole.
What is Environment Education?
The importance of environment education was realized for the first time in the Stockholm Conference held in Sweden between 5th and 16th June 1972. Environment education aims at making the individuals aware of their enviornment and problems related to it, and helps them to understand the effects human choices have on the environment. It necessitated bringing education closer to the reality of life. The primary goal of the environment education is to improve all ecological relationships including the relationship of humanity with nature and people among each other.
In conclusion, we can say that the environment education is the process of recognizing values and clarifying concepts to develop skills and attitudes, which are necessary to understand and apprecitate the inter-relation among human beings, their cultures and bio-physical surroundings. The environment education also entails practice in decision-making and self-formulation of  a code of behaviour about issues concerning ecvironment quality.